Ghostcrawler’s Arcania: Exotics, Aggro and Resistances
Someone was up late last night! And here’s a round-up of what our favorite beta crab Ghostcrawler had to say while posting on the WotLK Beta Hunter forum at 3 am.
On the change to pet resistances:
The problem with spell resistance is a successful resist grants immunity to both damage and effects such as CC.
We don’t want pets to get to the point where they resist nearly all CC effects… though being that this is a board of hunters you will probably disagree. :)
But we don’t want your pets to die to a single spell either, which is why we’d rather handle surviving spell damage (especially in PvP) through a percent damage reduction. That is something we are looking at now. There are also talents that can further reduce spell damage.
Because your pets benefit from your resistance, it should still be possible to get them to survive in magic-heavy PvE encounters.
On the current state of pet aggro in build 8770 (which is somewhat odd):
As you can see, the results are a little inconsistent. Before we just buff pet threat across the board, we need to make sure that there aren’t more bugs resulting in spikey or unpredictable behavior.
On Cower turning itself back on:
It’s just a bug. Spells turned off should stay off.
Because the chimera ability does two types of damage at once (like the new Mage spell), it seems to have some crazy scaling effect. This is the first pet ability with two types of damage, so it’s likely that is the problem.
On the tradeoffs between worms and devilsaurs:
Yeah, but you have to have a WORM for a pet. What if the other hunters laugh at you?
Indeed, I’ve been laughed at several times already as Kaet runs around the world with her big white worm Priapus.
54 Comments
Priapus? OMG. Wow. That takes some serious bravery, to try getting away with that kinda reference. But still, that’s pretty damn clever in it’s subtlety.
Mania, do you think you can post some thoughts on Cunning vs Tenacity vs Ferocity, considering how poorly tanking pets like Turtles fare currently? From looking that the trees alone, Ferocity looks the most interesting, but hows the difference in aggro and DPS between the trees?
Hey mania you uhh think you can regive me the email exsplaining how to take screenshots and where they go and how to put them on a website please my uhh labtop broke down so i was wondering if you could please send it to my main computer instead?
hahah @ Mania. Priapus is clever, if not a bit randy ;-)
Someone would definitely be offended at that name on a live server, after looking it up on the interwebnets first of course.
Thank you, as always, for the latest scoop from the beta.
Deidare: Re-sent. Let me know if it doesn’t make it to you.
Re: Priapus — I have to admit that I didn’t expect to keep this worm. The name was a joke for something I figured I’d be releasing in a few minutes, But somehow I still have him! And I’ll drop him if anyone complains. (Thank goodness the name filter didn’t let me go with my first choice!)
I like the worms now! Not funny when your face is melting off mu their Acid Spray LOL. I don’t like the Northrend Worm. I didn’t like them at first but was ok about it.
Oh, I know I posted but the Silithids skill (Venom Web Spray) seems better for Spiders. I mean Silithids don’t look like web spinners. (they look like ants mixed with a mantis)
Also is it me but do the Worms kinda have a face that says “Hug me!” or more like “Hug me…or I’ll melt your face off!” =/
*LAUGHS* That is so wrong, Mania….. its perfect. Don’t change it, even if some one DOES complain. Most likely anyone who knows what it means without looking it up is going to have a sense of humor anyway, and anyone who HAS to look it up has no right to complain.
Hey, at least we know future generations of Manias are well protected!
Web seems okay, the only problem is the cooldown. Even in PvP, 4 seconds, even at a range, isn’t really long enough to do anything except inch off another ten percent of a warriors health, or slowly craw away from that rogue that shived you. Putting it on a two minute cooldown, while it seems to fit in with their system, doesn’t make much sense. I’d prefer a venomous bite or something at this rate, a DoT bite on a ten second cooldown, similar to poison spit.
Speaking of which, I hate to bother you with a question when your being swamped Mania, but is poison spit performing any better now? The current one sucks so hard it ain’t even funny.
I still want 2 headed dogs/core hounds to be exotic.
ok, so i got a question about warpstalkers if Gezzarak the Huntress is now tamable how about the Phase-Hunter in Arcatraz??? Has any1 tried that him yet? It would be awesome to say you tamed a mini-boss and he’s the only 1 with that cool skin too…
Mania, I just have to thank you for the never-ending stream of info about WLK and the hunter/pet changes. Every day, mornings and evenings mostly, I check back here to see if there´s new stuff to glare at and usually there is! :D
So, my humblest thank you to you for doing this for the hunter community!
well, BRK has proved that the tenacity tree delivers the goods in this build.
He took a level 70 Warp Stalker and soloed Uvuros in SMW.
if you want to see for yourself to check out
http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/08/10/bigredkitty-uvuros/
What I find strange is that no one has asked what would’ve been the first name option for the worm. So, mania, feel like sharing? ;)
Great info!
I do hope that, when threat settles, all three trees work for PvE. I’m still concerned about Cunning, especially if it still has no +% damage. Ideally Tenacity should produce more aggro, and Ferocity more damage, with Cunning as a balancer. It’d be a shame if Cunning was useless for anything outside PvP – it would be nice if each tree could offer something to the PvPer, raider, instance-tank and soloist.
I got a Beta invite last night so sepnt some time on the EU test realm today. Tamed a Devilsaur and laughed my ass off at the dash/charge combo you can now do. I’m in love my my new grinding pet.
We’ve been given a massive boost to our class in terms of personalisation and game play style.
Can’t wait to see whats tamable at lvl 80
Priapus |prīˈāpəs| Greek Mythology
a god of fertility, whose cult spread to Greece (and, later, Italy) from Turkey after Alexander’s conquests. He was also a god of gardens and the patron of seafarers and shepherds.
? unless there is a different meaning i see no problem with the name .
Thanks for keeping us up to date , its disturbing my play a little though as i will want to level some new hunters when they finally get it public as i bet others will be doing as well.
I guess i just love trying out new things from the beginning and not from a high level push for ten levels.
“The problem with spell resistance is a successful resist grants immunity to both damage and effects such as CC.”
So basically it’s fine that our pets are easy to CC, removing a large part of our damage. I see. This is in addition to how quickly they die to melee attackers, as they completly lack mitigation.
As for PvE:
It’s trivial to have a pet resistance of 90 against a problem damage type. If the Hunter is capped (365), that translates to a resistance of 236, 65% of the maximum.
In wotlk, with resistance 80 and the Hunter capped (415), this translates to a resistance of 246, 59% of the maximum, less.
Warlock pets get the same resistances, but there is a trinket which adds a large amount of resistance to them AND in wotlk they get a *free* 90% AoE damage resistance, which we must spend 3 points on for 75% and this means some sacrifices in the avaliable abilities for non-51 point BM hunters.
Further, you have to remember that in situations where using a pet is not appropriate, Warlocks can talent for “sacrifice”, getting a major buff in place of having their pet avaliable – this is not an option for Hunters.
I’m really tempted to get a jormungar worm pet. The Dune references will never stop. Muahahaha!
Thats not the complete definition or explanation, Sandrolver. Lets just say that our friend the fertility god is alway very….. excited…. and its that particular portion when combined with it being a long, cydrilical worm that I find so amusing…..
Lol, and if you take a look at some of the sculptures of Priapus, a long, cydrilical worm just about “sizes” it up!
And I forgot to add, Mania, that I am forever grateful to all the hard work you are putting in with this beta info, as well as the other beta players who are contributing. It is just whetting my appetite to play the expansion.
Thank you!
Priapus is also a medical condition…when a man gets excited…and…umm…can’t get unexcited. That’s the best way to describe the condition without going into graphic sexual imagery. If you’re a man, you don’t want to go out walking in public or get on any crowded elevators when you’re suffering from Priapus.
(See, you learn something new and disturbing on the internet everyday).
LOL, I hope that worm’s name doesn’t get nerfed. XD
Although if I see this in the next patch notes:
“Worms have been removed from the Hunter’s list of tameable creatures, due to complaints of its suggestive nature of appearance” I will both simulataniously swear and LOL at you Mania.
Might be just as well that the pink worm skin is a little difficult to get hold of (for Alliance hunters anyway)… the PvP comments alone would boggle the mind: “that hunter’s giant purple ***** just ganked me!”
I can honestly say, I wish they would have given us Devilsaurs and then waited to give us EVERYTHING else that is exotic. The devilsaur was a teaser and oh what a teaser it was. However, adding one or two exotics each build just makes us wonder. They really haven’t balanced the non exotic pets well yet and the Cunning tree is still fairly out of balance as well.
So now we have Worms, Devilsaur, Chimera and Silithid as exotics? That is 1 Tenacity, 1 Ferocity and 2 Cunning pets. I really do hope they give us more than just 2 per tree, but I honestly do not think they will. If they do, then I can honestly say that the 51 point talent is just a joke. The 5 points are not worth it unless you are going to use a Tenacity pet and the exotics are too few and far between to be anything but a token.
On that note, the only 1 of the 4 that really interests me is the Silithid Tank. After being able to step into AQ40 and pick myself up a mount for the first time this week, it would be awesome to see what these can do as a pet. Is there any way we can get you to do an in depth “review” of each new exotic pet type?
As for other exotics I’d like to see. I am different than just the “I want a Core Hound” people or the “Giraffe” people. I would really like to see things like the Pterrodax, Dimetradons of Ungoro/SMV tamable. The Fei Dragons in Feralas and Blades Edge. The Firefly of Zangamarsh as well. Or how about Stags? I always really thought that they would make awesome pets.
In the end I really wish that the 51 point talent made it so we could tame “non-beasts” and not just “exotics”. Taming dragonkin would be cool, but that isnt happening. However, how about the rock giants, elementals, creatures, etc? Come on… who wouldnt want to run around with a mini bog lord as your companion?
Spacepest, they actually named that medical, uh, condition, after that particular fertility goddess. Okay, history lesson is over! *Laughs*
Nissi – While I’d like a Stag, I don’t think they are “exotic”.
Eh, I don’t like the.. “referance”. I’ll keep a beautiful, Epic white Devilsaur and eagle, the ones I’m, so far, looking forward to. Thankful for extra Stable slots. Hate the waiting for more new pets/pet families/Exotics. But it’s gonna be alot of work to get what I want. lol
Stags and/or shoveltusks would be interesting to add as new conventional pets rather than as exotics. Mammoths would be awesome as a second exotic Tenacity pet.
Regarding the BRK video – he used the 2-piece Tier 5 set bonus, which gives the pet 15% of the damage the hunter deals as healing, which Blood of the Rhino then increases to 21%. That doesn’t say anything to me about how good Tenacious pets may be at tanking in general, it only indicates how good the 2-piece Tier 5 bonus is for BM hunters.
I had to check out the BRK video and then attempt it myself. I had just tamed a worm and am level 71 with a mix of season 1 and 2 pvp armor with a few Khara items. I had NO problems soloing Uveros….in the beta i’m regularly killing up to level 77 mobs and 74 elites with NO problems. I can’t believe i’m saying this…but it’s too easy..I hope Bliz increases the difficulty?!
@Nissi: Have a quick read through the “Liveblogging..” comments, to see some good reasons why it’s a good talent. It’s not just the “exotic pets” part. It’s the 5 extra talent points. They are extremely useful for increasing dmg/survivability of pets (like getting all the dmg talents in Ferocity and still being able to spend points in armour/stam/resistance/etc).
That being said, I wouldn’t mind some small buff on it… ^^
(atm it only makes the pet more useful, not the hunter himself which is abit annoying..)
Yay, I like those worms, I find them pretty, weird huh? Anyway, shame Ill be a MM hunter when WotLK comes out..
My only real issue with ferocity is that it doesn’t have any more damage increasing talents aside from rabid, its final tier talent, while tenacity has the standard on tier one, and then blood of the rhino on tier two. Maybe just a second, maybe 5% damage increase on tier three or four for ferocity would be nice.
For the next issue of GC’s Arcania:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8430135720&sid=2000&pageNo=1#14
(Short version: some pet abilities are likely to have their focus costs reduced or eliminated)
I’m ok with the Ferocity tree really (on paper anyway), but a big issue is the focus cost of some of the talents (in all trees). Even with GFFT and BD, you’ll have to switch all abilities on autocast (Bite/claw and so forth) off to save up enough focus to be able to perform the ability, then back on before you lose too much dps.
Seems like a lot of clunky micro-management.
Ideally, talents like Rabid shouldn’t cost any focus, because they’re restricted sufficently by cooldowns (as far as I can tell).
But a kind of “kill-switch” that turns off all pet abilities, would be very nice.
Just 1 press to turn everything off, pop the desired talent when focus is built up, then press again to switch them all on.
Should be possible to make a macro to do the job (and allow you to choose what you want to be turned on/off, in case you don’t want cower/growl or whatever on/off).
Anyone in beta have some thoughts on it?
Real worms is not so strong & exotic )
Curumor, the simple expedient would be to just have your core essentials out on your pet bar: Focus dump, growl, family trait, fifth tier talent, and work from there. Some pet families won’t even need the family ability out on the bar. That being said, if you take multiple tier fives then it becomes more difficult, and might require a bit more micro managing. Here is hoping that they go through with the decreasing of focus costs or removing the focus costs on larger cooldowns all together.
Priapus is an excellent name for a worm. After all, there’s an entire family known as the Priapulid worms.
And the technical name of the condition is priapism, actually. The condition of Priapus would just turn you into a fertility god.
@Curumor – I have read the usefulness of those extra 5 points. I still do not see much more from these 5 points than some survivability or permanent dash/dive. I am sorry, a 51 point talent should make the hunter better in what we do, ie dps. Having our pets, have slightly more health or armor does us little to no good in the grand scheme of things. Blizzard can not afford to change enemies for us to require the armor/stamina because then they essentially remove points from the pool by doing so.
The reality is, that these 5 points do not better us as a class. The ability to tame an exotic pet is nice and all, but if their DPS doesnt outclass the normal pets, we are left with a little bit of solo utility with the Worm, and that’s it. Now if we had the opportunity as 51 point BM to train into a separate tree with those points it would be worth it. I really do believe that this would not be overpowered, but would make the talent worth having for more than just a cosmetic buff. The pet talent trees just do not have enough in them to better our dps. Survivability belongs in the survival tree. If we wanted our pet to have more health and armor we would use the talents in our OWN tree rather than the pets.
@Palladiamors:
Aye, with the Ferocity build I’m thinking of, there’ll be at least two extra skill (and possibly Heart of Phoenix), so that ends up as alot of micro-managing from what I can see. I do like the idea of pets being more then just a automated dps you send in and out of combat (which is how raids go now), but it should be something you can handle quickly without fiddling about. But guessing they’ll be doing alot of tests to see how things work. ^^
@Nissi: Well, that depends on what you view as the grand scheme. For me, pets being able to survive more without dps suffering is very nice. An example would be the IC fight (don’t know your raid experience, but gonna assume at least BT).
Pets can die pretty quickly there (especially if the MT is a bit slow to move around) and that really hits where it hurts.
The fight is basically “Stay away from fire and nuke for all you’re worth!” from a hunter view, so having to stop and ress pets or pull them out and heal just means losing dps time.
In PvP added survivability on pets without dps suffering is also a huge plus. Few things more annoying for a BM hunter in arena than seeing your pet get 1-2shot.
With those extra 5 points, your pet can survive more without having to take a tank pet.
And thus far exotic pets do seem to be a bit better than “normal” pets.
But I agree that the talent doesn’t really buff the hunter, just the pet. It would be nice with an added bonus of some kind, like a %dmg buff.
It may not be among the best 51point talents, I still think it’s worth taking.
@Nissi
Having the 51 point talent changed to a dps talent, would not actually increase our dps (crazy as that sounds). Blizzard will have a set dps range that they will want classes to do in raids, they will not let us go above that range but will also not let us fall out of that range. So no matter how many or how few dps talents you get, you still end up with the same amount of dps. Therefore the ideal situation would be to get no new dps talents so that we get all out dps increase through extra scaling of our base abilities, and instead we end up with a pile of utility talents which lets us do new things at no real cost to our dps. If blizzard made the 51 point talent more of a dps talent, then they would reduce our dps somewhere else to balance things out.
Also blizzard is moving towards mixing the talent trees, so while survival tree might have more survivability than the others, they do want some survival talents in tall the trees. Likewise they was to have multiple pvp trees and multiple raid dps trees.
Finally, the pet talent trees are not complete yet, ghostcrawler mentioned in one of his comments that strong restrictions are yet to come on the top tier pet talents. So it is early days yet to claim that the 5 pet talents points are marginal.
@Curumor – I can see your point that survival is a huge raid issue. I can really see the good in making pets have higher survival rates. I just do not believe that given the option between stamina/armor vs dps/utility that 90% of hunters will take the former.
I see it this way. As we leveled our current pets we had very few options. When I first rolled my hunter we has very few things to use our points on. With BC they expanded this, giving us Avoidance and Cobra Reflexes. However, for the most part, every hunter was relegated into putting a middle ranged rank of both stamina and armor on their pet. This is no longer the case. At the end of the day, Blizzard needs to give us more pet survivability period. Not force us to take a talent in order to pick up some survivability.
This can be solved in several ways. 1) Buff all pet stamina/armor percentages gained from scaling with the hunter. 2) Flat out buff all pet stamina/armor and reduce the values of the two talents. 3) Give all pets the Avoidance talent by default and remove it from the talent trees.
Personally, I would prefer the 3rd. By giving everyone a talent that they just plain made trainable for Warlock pets, they would free up 3 talent points that ALL hunters will use. These points are not an option on ANY pet, for ANYthing the hunter will do in the game. These 3 points then would be used by each hunter in different ways. Some would use them on pure stamina, some on armor, some on a little of each. But the reality, is a 51 point talent should help us do what we do better. Making our 51 point talent make our pet do a little better is not good enough. (Especially if our pet goes from 20-30% of our total dps to 10% because of changes like the recent Kill Command debaucle.)
@Aryzel – I understand your point, but the reality is that the 5 points is not utility in all 3 trees. In Tenacity its worth it, in Ferocity and Cunning its really not. I do hope what you say is true and the pet talent trees are not complete yet. I realize its the “early days” of the beta, but so far I am extremely disheartened by all six talent trees hunters will have. True, there is alot of potential there, but its really not there yet.
PS: Yeah its a wall of text. Would it be so hard to either make those 5 points usable in any family tree? Or for that matter changing Spirit Bond into a 1 point trainable skill that does what our T5 2set does and start at level 20 with 2% going to level 80 and 15%?
I still love the name and still see little wrong with it , after all here in england there are many chalk figures cut into hillsides and one is very famous for his build yet nobody gets offended.
The most famous of these is the Cerne Abbas Giant cut into the hillside above the village of Cerne Abbas near Dorchester in Dorset. The figure is over 180 feet high and his ‘ virility’ is very obvious! During Roman times he was identified as Hercules and associated with a fertility cult, or Priapus Worship, revived by Emperor Commodus in the late 2nd century AD.
It also appeals to my sense of humour , and at least is not as offensive as many characters names are on my servers.
Mania could you please show a screenshot with someone with a Chillwind Chimaera???
Is The Phase-Hunter in Arcatraz tamable????? Please Someone Help Me OUT!!!!!
Unless I am mistaken, and I may very well be, all pets DO get avoidance as a baseline ability. If they don’t then they darn well should, they did it for warlock minions, and originally only my felguard had that. Otherwise on the survivability from, it seems like all pets have had a good increase to it. In fact, maybe to much. Watching BRK take out Urvuros or however you spell it in Shadowmoon Valley is a good example. T-5/6 or not, that wasn’t a small feat, and his warp stalker was never in any real danger.
With that being said, those extra five points will add PADDING onto any Ferocity or Cunning pet, and more then just a bit. As a hunter aiming for a high DPS on your pet, without beast master you will have to pick and choose in order to maximize your damage out put. As a 51 point beast mastery, you can take pretty much all of the damage mitigation and DPS talents, as well as your choice of one or two others. I think it enhances the beast mastery tree nicely. And if you disagree, or just plain don’t like it, your answer is simple. Don’t take it.
I do, however, have to agree with your idea for spirit bond. Give it the 15% of damage healed effect, and shift it down in the tree. Hate to sound like I am repeating myself, but warlocks got it, and they don’t share any where near the bond a hunter and their pet do.
survivabilty front* and there’s my double post.
“Thank goodness the name filter didn’t let me go with my first choice!”
Ooh, what might that have been?
Avoidance is not a base ability, it’s in the 3rd tier in each talent tree:
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?petcalc
25% damage reduction per point, up to 3 points.
5$ says her original name choice was Bukake (or how ever it’s spelled)
Sorry, Maevet. It was actually Penis.
Should’ve tried Phallus :)
Personally, if I tame a worm, I’m naming him Freud or Freudian. :)
of course the ideal worm name would be “Compensating”
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